


Seeking Respite

by througheden



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-17 12:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/througheden/pseuds/througheden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Some people woke to alarms or car horns; Spencer woke to his own screams."</p><p>Contains (possibly graphic?) recounts of 2x15. (I say possibly graphic because I study forensics and have far too high a threshold for gore to determine what is and is not graphic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeking Respite

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as the 2x15 coda I started for a good friend and then lost at work and tried to rewrite. But then this happened. I might continue with it and make it a series if you guys like it. I have some other requests I'm still working on and a sequel to "L'appel du vide" in the works as well. :)

_Hotch: You know I always take advantage of Reid for his brain, but I never actually teach him how to deal with things emotionally._

_Gideon: You lead by example._

_Hotch: What kind of example is that?_

_Gideon: [softly] He’ll make it._

* * *

“ _Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you._ ” -  _Friedrich Nietzsche_

***

Some people woke to alarms or car horns; Spencer woke to his own screams.

It would have been concerning if it weren’t a daily occurrence, but it _was_ a daily occurrence now— just another piece of his morning routine. He woke up with a sore throat and beads of sweat trailing down his kinked neck. His morning shower focused on scrubbing the non-existent dirt out from under his fingernails and washing the long-gone dried blood from his hair. No matter how long he scrubbed, he could not wash the smell of the cemetery out of his skin. It crept into his pores and stubbornly refused to leave.

Memories of his days with Tobias haunted him; his wounds were apparitions he could not escape. Some mornings, he still felt the whipping at his foot. Other mornings, he felt the force of the gunshot far too close to his head. 

Still others, he heard that innocent woman’s screams through the computer screen.

Those were the mornings he reached for the tiny vial and needle hidden in the back of his sock drawer. It was a liquid eraser as it surged through his veins, washing away what the shower couldn’t.

It was just another piece of his morning routine.

***

When Spencer walked into the office those mornings, his team generally didn’t notice anything off about him. They had at first, of course, but given enough time, ‘new’ becomes ‘normal’. The immediate effects of the narcotics always wore off long before he dared public transportation, leaving him in only a slight haze; just enough to get him through the day, but nothing that threatened the integrity of his profiling.

This particular morning was different—he ran out of Dilaudid.

When he closed his eyes to shampoo, images of the innocent woman taunted him. Even when he opened his eyes, he saw the terror coloring her eyes, the splatter of blood. He couldn’t blink it away, couldn’t make it stop. And so he went to his sock drawer. 

His hand found nothing but an empty vial.

As he trashed his apartment searching desperately for a spare source, he cursed himself for being so careless.

“Can’t even be a good addict—” He muttered to himself, surrounded by emptied duffel bags and pulled out drawers. 

A quick look at his watch confirmed that there was no possible way he’d have to time to pick up, use, and wait for the effects to wear off before work, and he was far too dedicated to his job to put anything before it. With a sigh, he stood; his knees were a bit shaky and his arms were still red from scratching at them in the shower. After a few deep breaths, he grabbed his messenger bag and stalked towards the door, stepping over upturned drawers.

He’d just have to bring his ghosts to work with him.

***

It didn’t take long before apparitions of screaming women and the smell of cemetery soil encroached in on him. Nor did it take long for his team to notice something was very, very wrong.

Morgan was the first to ask him if he was okay.

“Hey man, you alright?” He asked, leaning against the desk. Spencer knew him well enough to know he was feigning his casual exterior. 

“Yeah, fine, just a long night,” he brushed him off, turning his attention to the case files stacked in front of him. 

A few moments later, JJ followed Morgan’s example.

“Spence, you seem a little off. Everything okay?” 

“JJ, really, I’m okay. Just tired.” It was hard lying to her, and he wasn’t positive he’d convinced her, but she left regardless. 

Prentiss followed suit soon after.

“You haven’t finished your coffee yet, Reid, something wrong?”

He refused to make eye contact, sure that his face would tell more than he was willing to let on. 

“I know you’re all taking turns hoping I’ll tell one of you what you think is the truth but honestly, I’m okay.” He replied, his finger trailing down a page. 

Gideon followed about an hour later. He was much harder to lie to; he had to make eye contact.

“It’s been hard and I’m just not sleeping very well. But I’m okay, honestly,” he choked out, focusing too intently on his facial expressions and the pace of his breath. Gideon nodded and left him alone at his desk. Either he believed him, or just thought it easier to ignore the true problem.

A few hours passed and Spencer buried himself in his paperwork, trying to hide from the waking nightmares lapping at him, threatening to pull him beneath their current. His foot was beginning to twinge with the ghosts of the whip. He couldn’t stop running his hand through his hair, trying to shake out the dirt. He picked at his fingernails, trying desperately to remove the caked mud from their undersides. Everything pressed down on him, finding him even under stacks of case files.

Just when he was about to crack, one more team member decided to ask if he was okay.

“Reid, are you alright?”

He looked up to see Hotch leaning against his desk, looking through him as if he already knew the answer. And Spencer couldn’t bring himself to lie. He just didn’t have the energy.

Luckily, he didn’t have to say a word; the panic in his face when he met Hotch’s concerned gaze was more telling than anything he could have said.

“Come on,” Hotch said, his voice low enough that no one else would hear him. He placed a hand on Spencer’s back as he stood, steadying him on shaky knees. 

It hurt Hotch to see Spencer this beaten. He wasn’t weak or feeble as others may suspect. He’d seen his fearlessness, his endurance, his strength—Hotch saw him save Elle on that train; he’d watched him face down an unsub with a bomb strapped to his chest without fear. Knowing his strengths and still having to brace Spencer on the way to his office, careful to avoid the concerned eyes of his team, was heartbreaking.

As he guided Spencer to his office and watched him seat himself in the chair across from his desk, his entire body twitching under the enormous weight he carried, Hotch blamed himself.

When Spencer joined the team, Hotch silently took responsibility for guiding him. Gideon was his mentor, of course—a father figure—but he would need more than that. This job was dangerous, it was grueling, and it required camaraderie—something Hotch wanted to provide for the young profiler. He wanted him to have the necessary support and the non-judgmental soundboard Hotch wished he’d had when he joined the team. And as good an agent as Gideon was, Hotch knew he wouldn’t be able to offer that for Spencer. 

In retrospect, Hotch recognized that he’d been using Spencer. He was an asset to cases with his quick thinking and expansive knowledge, and Hotch shuddered to think how many innocent people—his own team included—would be six feet below if not for Spencer. But as Hotch watched Spencer drag his nails through his hair, he realized that as he latched onto his mind, he lost sight of the young man staring evil in the face day after day. The consequences of his ignorance had never been clearer. 

“What’s going on, Reid?” Hotch asked, closing his blinds and foregoing the formality of his office chair. He leaned against the front of his desk, palms resting on either side of his body.

“I'm still in that graveyard,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. There was a desperation dripping from his words that broke something in Hotch. It was worse than he thought.

“Talk to me,” he replied, fighting the urge to drop to his knees and protect Spencer from whatever it was that was suffocating him. 

There was a moment of silence before he lifted his head from his hands. When he did, Hotch saw bags hanging from bloodshot eyes on an almost skeletonized face. His skin was pale and sheered with a light coating of sweat, mingled with renegade tears Spencer fought to hold back. 

“I re-live it every day,” he began. “The sting of the whip, the sound of the gun, the rotting scent of that cemetery. I can't leave, I'm—I'm stuck there. And I—I could almost live with those memories. But I can’t—the terror in that woman’s eyes when he—she had a family, Hotch.” Spencer’s voice broke with the last few words, barely choking out Hotch’s name. 

And then he was sobbing. 

Those stubborn tears he’d fought to keep to himself when alone in bed at night came with a vengeance. Each tear was a memory of that night—a scream, a sting, another taste of his own blood. Each wracked sob that tore through his rib cage was a reminder of that innocent woman’s own pain and shrill terror.

“Reid,” Hotch started, kneeling to Spencer’s eye-level, “you didn’t kill her. You aren’t responsible, you have to know that.” His words fell flat as Spencer’s body shook with each exhalation.

Spencer might have reacted, if only he could hear the words. But the ghosts surrounded him now and everything was mute behind their influence. It was like trying to listen to voices underwater. 

“Nothing makes it stop—” Each word punctuated by a painful inhalation. 

“Not work. Not sleep. Not Dilaudid—nothing drowns out her screams and these—these memories. They’re like—like ghosts, Hotch. I can’t fight something that isn’t real; I can’t make something stop that isn’t happening.” 

Spencer was so enraptured in his own anguish he hadn’t realized what he said, but Hotch latched onto the single word immediately. 

_Dilaudid_.

He should have known. All the signs were there—adapting so quickly back to the work environment, the subtle but noticeable personality changes, long sleeve shirts in 80 degree buildings. In hindsight, it should have been obvious. _Maybe if you hadn’t forgotten that Spencer wasn’t just a brain, it would have been_ , he thought to himself. 

As an agent, ethically, he was obligated to report Spencer’s use; not doing so put his own job at risk. But as a friend, he just couldn’t find it within himself to care, especially not when he felt at least partially to blame. 

They’d talk about it later, when Spencer didn’t look as if he were being dragged under a rip tide. Instead, Hotch leaned forward and pulled Spencer into him. He nudged him out of the chair by the shoulders and wrapped his arms around Spencer’s upper back, holding him against his chest. The sobs tearing through his body shook Hotch, and when Spencer wrapped his own arms around Hotch’s midsection and dug his nails into his back, desperately clinging to reality, he wanted to cry for him. 

Spencer had only hugged Hotch once before—the night that birthed his specters. Back then, it had been relief and warmth and gratitude. It was characterized by life and survival, even when juxtaposed with the rotting cemetery and the grave he had just dug for himself. Ironically, it was his single pleasant memory from that night. 

This hug was different. This hug was less a hug and more a frantic need for an anchor, for something to tie him to the present. It was not relief or gratitude—it was desperation and stability, a sense of security he only seemed to find in Hotch. His reality was slipping out from under his fingers a bit more each day and when surrounded by invisible screams, he preferred it that way. But there, clinging to Hotch like a drowning man seeking respite, he wanted nothing more than the present. 

He rested there, his forehead pressed against Hotch’s collarbone, Hotch’s hands still balled into fists against his shoulder blades. Neither man moved for what seemed to be ages—Hotch remained on his knees and let Spencer clutch at his jacket as he sobbed, wordlessly offering the support Spencer knew he needed but hadn’t known where to find. 

Eventually the sobs slowed to exaggerated exhalations and the tears stopped, leaving Spencer’s face chapped with dry streaks of moisture. His chest hurt, as if his lungs had expanded and bruised his rib cage. 

“Why didn’t you come to me sooner?” Hotch asked, his voice barely a whisper. This time, Spencer heard his words clearly, no longer distorted by the phantoms of his own mind. 

“I just… couldn’t.” His reply vibrated just below Hotch’s collarbone.

“Well, now you know that you can,” Hotch said, pulling back just enough to level Spencer’s eyes. “You’ve been through a lot, Reid. I know how much pressure you put on yourself to prove your abilities to this team. I know you hate that the team tries to coddle or protect you and I’m sure that played a role in your withdrawing. You seem to think that if you don’t pretend to be okay, we’re going to treat you as if you’re damaged. But we won’t—I won’t. You’ve been exposed to some horrific trauma, Reid. And it’s okay to not be okay right now.” 

Hotch’s fists relaxed as he spoke and moved up to brace themselves on his shoulders. Spencer averted his eyes, uncomfortable with the intimacy of the moment. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he should probably unclench Hotch’s jacket but a much larger piece of himself begged to hold on.

“I’m not here to protect you. I’ve seen your abilities, Reid, I know exactly how strong and capable you are. But these—these ghosts that you’re struggling against? They’re stronger than any one of us.” Spencer glanced back up at him and saw a change in his demeanor. His words were more colloquial, his eyes dimmed with a concern beyond the team. These were not the words of his co-worker. These were the words of a friend. 

“You don’t need to talk to me, but you need to talk to someone. This is crippling you.”

He wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea, with divulging his weaknesses to anyone but himself, but something in Hotch’s voice was trusting. 

“If you don’t mind, I—I think I’d like to talk to you about it, then.” 

Hotch bit his lower lip and nodded, helping Reid to his feet as he stood. 

“One condition.” He said as they both rose to their feet. 

Spencer looked at him questioningly. 

“Talk to someone about the Dilaudid.” Spencer’s right hand reached toward his left arm unconsciously, scratching at his hidden track marks. He sighed as he closed his eyes, remembering his inadvertent confession. 

Hotch reached out and placed a warm palm back on Spencer’s shoulder. “I’m won’t tell anyone so long as you promise you’ll get help. There’s only so much I can do, Reid, and addiction is out of my league.” 

Spencer nodded, swallowing around the apprehension in his throat. “I ran out this morning…,” he said, meeting Hotch’s eyes in a silent vow. “I won’t restock.” 

Fingers squeezed his shoulders, wordless confirmation of his trust. 

“Have a seat. Let’s talk.” 

Spencer lowered himself into the chair opposite Hotch and recounted it all. The guilt, the fear, the hopelessness. 

As Spencer spoke, Hotch listened. And for the first time in a very long time, he didn’t feel haunted. He finally left the graveyard. And maybe, one day, the graveyard would leave him. 

 

* * *

 

“... _throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive_.” _\- Friedrich Nietzsche_


End file.
